Arrowhead

This arrowhead has been shaped to pierce the mail of armoured knights. It would have originally have been fitted to a shaft made of ash wood with flights made from goose feathers and would have been fired from the feared longbow. The longbow was the weapon of “mass destruction” of its day. Usually made from yew, these bows probably originated in Wales and were used to devastating effect by English archers during the medieval period. It was the longbow which sealed William Wallace’s loss of the Battle of Falkirk, after succeeding in stopping the charge of the English cavalry, his men’s spear formations were simply decimated by arrows from afar. The Scots were far luckier at Bannockburn when their cavalry were able to rout the English bowmen near the start of the Battle, had this key objective not been achieved, the outcome of the Battle may have been very different indeed.